Translated from the Vietnamese original “Nơi Mặt Đất Hình Thành” (Da Màu, March 29th, 2010)
It’s so strange
The place where I stand might have the dead buried underneath
Just as many things that used to live
But things are still living and perhaps
Some place where someone stands would have the people who lived where I stand
Buried beneath
I can see the stems along which death is sneaking somewhere
Like a mirror coming to split
Slowly with cracking sounds
So fearsome
Do you see people go by and discover those sounds
Just as they create many other sounds
Like a world splitting into its future
With very distinct ways of sounding
I also see the same thing within myself
Just like they have seen
And have feared its sounds
And yet other sounds deep within those sounds—
As though the ground is overtaking them
Until that moment, when they have to vanish
Even though not accepting it
Where the ground forms
Out of things that are not earth
This world convulses against decay
It pains me in those parts.
.